


dreams like bells in the distance

by pistolgrip



Series: 12+1 days of siesixmas [9]
Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21949102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pistolgrip/pseuds/pistolgrip
Summary: When the clock turns over at midnight, Six gets a Christmas visit from one jolly S. Claus. The identity behind the first initial is... questionable.
Relationships: Siete | Seofon/Six | Seox (Granblue Fantasy)
Series: 12+1 days of siesixmas [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1570165
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	dreams like bells in the distance

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, everyone! If you’ve read any part of this silly little Christmas project, thank you—have a good rest of the season!  
> …Or so you think. I've got one more tomorrow that I'm still debating on posting (it's the first one I wrote for siesixmas), so... look out in the next few days I guess?! If the new year comes in and I haven't posted it, it's probably good to consider it tucked away.

Six wakes up from his Christmas Eve slumber to the sound of the wind rattling at his window and sleigh bells _again,_ to his chagrin. He takes his pillow and covers his ears. He can't control the weather, but Siete's been ringing those sleigh bells without stopping since he got his hands on them, and he has enough problems sleeping without whatever method Siete devises to annoy him. He should know better than to believe that he could get a night of peaceful sleep on—

He checks the clock. It's a few minutes past midnight, making it Christmas. Siete would be even less receptive now to Six's complaints, but he suffers the thought to crawl out of bed and to his door. He prepares himself for the sight of Siete, causing a commotion by walking up and down the hallways, but then his ears twitch. Now that he's more awake, he realizes now that the jingle of sleigh bells is coming not from the hallway, but from behind him. He whips around to his window covered by thick curtains; what he thought was wind rattling his windows is a _knocking_ sound.

Hurrying over to the curtains, a revelation stops him in his tracks. The thought that overcomes him is irrational, but so compelling that he's convinced—mere minutes after midnight on Christmas day, accompanied with sleigh bells ringing outside his window, could only mean one man.

He's waited for this moment since he was a child, never able to extinguish the hope he had in his heart that Santa Claus would visit him one day. His anticipation is so great that it turns over and becomes anxiety, freezing him to the spot. Nausea racks his body, and every breath he takes feels like he's underwater.

Santa never once visited the Karm hamlet. Even from a young age, Six knew not to expect that the personification of Christmas itself would consider any children born in that godless place worthy of receiving cheer. But he'd held bitter resentment with every year that Christmas came and went in those ruins; it remains the most juvenile part of him, as a young man inextricable from his childhood self.

He's not a child anymore, and although the reminder stings around the holiday season, he'd almost found peace with the simple truth that he never deserved to meet Santa. For the good children, Santa would give presents, and he was far from either. But now, faced with the potential of meeting him, all of his hopes and fears surge at once. He holds the curtains tighter, questions from years past choking him: _Did you forget about me? Was I not worthy? Why did you wait until now to visit me?_

The sleigh bells have become white noise, but the knocking shakes him from his thoughts. "Six Karm! Merry Christmas!"

That voice—that merry voice, muffled through the thick glass of his window, makes him wrench the curtains apart. The winter chill whips at his fingers, gripping onto the window he hoists open, but he's numb to the cold.

He opens the window as far as it can go, and a flurry of snow sweeps inside. The rushing wind blows his ears back against his head, but he before he shields his eyes, he sees the man in red on the other side.

When the snowflakes drift to rest on the floor of his room, he fights through the anxiety to look up at Santa with wide eyes—and he forgets how to breathe, the adrenaline coursing through his veins stopping dead in its tracks.

He blinks, his expression falling.

 _Santa_ doesn't match the descriptions he's heard. _Santa_ looks wrong, dressed in enough red but too much green and not enough white, in an outfit that Six saw less than a week ago at the Eternals' Christmas party. The greatest offender is the grin that's on _Santa's_ face—the definition of _cheer_ without the restriction of _Christmas_ , one that Six knows too well.

The sparkling snow fades, taking the magic with it, leaving Six in blank disbelief as the man that is _not_ Santa Claus crawls through his window.

Insomnia has been a problem for Six his entire life, and winter's cold temperatures only made it worse. Even now, the chill seeps in through his open window, carrying snow into his room—and still, his body is so heavy with acute exhaustion that he could lie on his snow-covered floor and fall into a restful sleep.

Numbness spreading through his body, he offers Siete no assistance as he squeezes through the open window. He watches as Siete stumbles and loses his balance, his entire body slamming against the floor hard enough to rattle the desk, the sleigh bells rolling out of his hand and underneath Six's bed. The Santa hat slides off his lion's mane hair when he rolls onto his back and groans, pulling the fake beard out of the way of his face. The bag he carries is much too flat to contain presents, more for show than for real use.

Six breathes out, his spirit deflating with each second that passes.

With more of a grimace than a smile, Siete turns his head towards Six. "Ho ho ho," he cheers. Even without being obscured by glass and Six's own heartbeat, Siete makes his voice sound like what he'd expected Santa's to, and the shock of betrayal strikes through him. "Merry Christmas, Six Karm!"

Words take a few moments to form, and when they do, they leak between Six's tired lips, monotone. "I'm going back to bed." He drags his feet through the snow on his floor and crawls back into bed, willing this nightmare to end.

"Wait, wait," Siete says in his regular voice. Six shuts his eyes tight with a frown, trying to ignore Siete's groaning as he stands. It would be too much to ask for Siete to leave him alone without being told, but when Siete talks again, irritation rises within him regardless. "I had a whole Santa monologue ready for you, but you took so long that I forgot it. I was out there for ten whole minutes banging at your window!"

Six puts the blanket over his head, covering his ears, but nothing can stop Siete once he's on a mission, no matter how inane. He prattles on. "I didn't think it would be _that_ bad of a climb from my window to yours since they're right next to each other, but _boy_ , it was cold!"

Siete shuts the window with a heave, and the world becomes quieter. Six lowers the blanket enough to glare at him. "You _climbed_ _over_ from your own window?"

"Yeah? The opportunity presented itself for a dramatic Christmas entrance. How cool did I look?"

"Your face became acquainted with my floor."

"But before that, I looked _cool_ , right?"

Six decides to make Siete's question rhetorical. "What do you want?" he asks, takes control of the conversation to bring it to its end sooner.

"To wish you a Merry Christmas," Siete says. To his horror, he sits at the foot of Six's bed, prompting him to pull the covers back over him and burrow his face into the pillow.

He muffles his response, trying to make it unintelligible. "The method you've chosen to deliver your greeting escapes all reason."

Siete doesn't miss a beat, letting out a laugh too hearty for this time of night, on this specific day. His weight shifts to lean his weight on one arm, in Six's direction. He could kick him off of the bed. He could kick him _out_.

"I _could_ have knocked on your door, but then I thought, 'wouldn't it be more fun to surprise Six with the one he's been waiting for?'"

His eyes widen. He throws off his blanket and jolts upright, indignation igniting like fire up to his lips. His hands grip his sheets as he opens his mouth, and Siete waits with his eyebrows raised, face red from exposure and still shivering.

How _dare_ Siete—How dare _Siete_ read him so well—"How dare you _humiliate_ me," he grits out. "Playing your childish pretend games and believing it would—that it was what I _wanted_ —" Six is floundering under the breadth of emotions surging through him, so jumbled that he can't pinpoint Siete's greatest injustice against him.

His words shrink back into his mouth, and in return, he awaits a laugh in his face, another joke. Either of those would have been easier than what he gets instead.

Siete tilts his head, and a hint of a smile turns the corner of his lips upwards. Siete doesn't give hints. He either covers truth beneath so many layers that the effort to uncover it is never worth the revelation, or, in rare occasions, he's straightforward.

Six scans his face, his body language for clues, but gains no more insight on what he's hiding behind his not-quite smile. He slumps over, putting his head in his hands. "Leave me be. You've done enough damage."

Siete shifts, but doesn't stand up from the bed. "Are you gonna make me climb out the window back into my own room?"

After a deep breath, Six lifts his head from his hands. Siete still has the same, anxiety-inducing half-smile. "Why?"

"As extra punishment for interrupting your sleep—"

"Why did you do _this_?"

Siete blinks. "To bring you Christmas cheer!" His face lights up with a smile closer to the one Six knows, but with a key piece missing that keeps him searching. "But it was kind of a bad idea."

"As yours often are."

"Yeah, but I know you've mentioned before that Santa never visited you in Karm, so I thought it would be fun to greet you like this. I got your hopes up for nothing."

"I had no hopes at all."

Siete looks at him.

"Santa only visits good children," Six explains, as obvious as it should be. "I am neither."

"There it is, ladies and gentlemen." The familiarity in his smile disappears, retreating into the unknown depths. "Visiting good kids? That's _Santa_. I'm not Santa."

"You've tried to embody him," Six points out, but both of them know that he looks nothing like Santa except for the fake beard and his Santa hat, abandoned on the floor behind him. "You must have something similar in mind."

" _Similar_ , yeah. But instead of kids, I'm just visiting who I think's been a good boy this year."

Six grimaces. Siete takes one look at him and bursts into boisterous laughter.

He was tired moments ago, but anxious energy swirls in him again, urging him to continue the conversation instead of removing Siete from his room. He's on the cusp of something, whether it be proper answers or more questions, and if he doesn't get either, he won't sleep. "Then who else is on this list of yours for your night as a fraudulent Santa Claus?"

"Ooh, _Six_." Siete wags his eyebrows, and his voice takes on the meandering, musical tone that signals to Six that regardless of what will come out of that mouth next, he won't like it. "Didn't take you for the jealous type."

"Jealous of those free from you tonight, perhaps."

"Sorry to disappoint, but the only one I'm visiting tonight is you. No need to be jealous, I'm yours all night!"

"You reassure me for the exact thing I loathe."

"C'mon, it's not so bad to have me in your room for Christmas, right? Elsewhere in the skydom," Siete croons, "this is a lover's holiday—"

He closes his eyes and sighs, and Siete's smile haunts him there in the darkness, his words echoing in his mind. "Your ability to make abhorrent situations worse knows no bounds."

Six's grasp on his age is tenuous, but he knows that from his birth to now, there's been at least twenty years in his life, twenty Christmases without Santa visiting him. And then Siete, with all his foolish hopes and unreadable motives, took it upon himself to visit Six as Santa would. That moment when he opened the window, Six felt the closest thing to elation that he could grasp with his wretched hands. But when the snow settled and he found _Siete_ where Santa Claus should have been, trying to carry out the same role because he believed that Six deserved a visit.

It sounds like one of Siete's jokes, to give him false hope and remind him that he never had a reason to receive a visit from Santa—but the Siete in front of him is too quiet, too reserved to consider that the truth. A different emotion stirs, one too twisted with revulsion to consider calling it _gratitude_. But the realization that Siete tried to do for him what Santa never did trickles through his thoughts, warming him up as the beginnings of a fever should.

He wants to ask _why_ again, but he should know by now that Siete won't give him a straight answer—not tonight, and not ever. "Not even Fif?" Exhaustion makes his voice croak.

"Fif? Lord, no! I can't deflect her magic with mine. She'd get so excited to see _Santa_ that she'd go supernova and accidentally beat the shit out of me."

The profanity startles Six out of responding, and Siete yawns as loud as he can over Six's attempt to form words, stretching his arms.

When he looks back to Six, he looks more established into the strange half-smile he's had since sitting down at the foot of the bed, as if his regular, bright smiles were a secret that he had to restrain.

"But hey, Six."

The hush of his name on Siete's lips sends just one question through his mind, mirrored against the ones he had for the man Siete was pretending to be. This is what Six finds when he lets himself fall over that precarious edge: both answers and questions, now turned inwards to himself instead of outwards to Siete.

_Why did you choose now to visit me?_

Siete leans closer to him again, tilting his head. He speaks like he's keeping a present safe, neither revealing his secret nor concealing its existence from Six's observation.

"Thanks for your hard work this year, and for all the ones before. And if you won't give yourself credit"—his voice rises with mischief, closer to familiarity before it topples once more into unknown territory—"then Siete Claus will. Banish that _darkness_ from your _loveless_ heart for two seconds and give yourself a pat on the back for surviving another year."

When the anxiety returns this time, he knows it's not because he's close to figuring out something about Siete. It's because he's close to figuring out something about himself.

By now, Six is ready to dismiss this experience as a fever dream. Siete flew through his room like a snowstorm so sudden that his only choice was to weather it until it subsided; it was impossible for him to survive unharmed, and this time, he doesn't know how to tend to the wounds that Siete dealt him.

Siete stands with a groan. "Use the door," Six blurts out, begging him to stop doing things that so effortlessly remain in his memory.

"Oh, I definitely _won't_. You're not free from me yet—and besides, I started this day as Siete Claus, and I'm ending it like that."

Six's eyes flicker to the clock. "The day just started."

"Now you're getting it!"

Siete picks his bag up off the ground and digs through; it's disproportionately large for the small pouch he pulls out, filled with Christmas cookies and tied with a red ribbon. He puts it on the bed by Six's feet with a wink before walking up to the window. This time, when he pries it open, Six has neither anticipation nor adrenaline to keep him warm from the sharp winter air.

It would be pointless to tell Siete to be reasonable and exit through the door. He lets him put one leg out the window, watches as he nearly trips trying to bring the other one up. More snow blows in, catching the light and creating a halo around Siete's struggle to climb out without falling to the ground beneath him.

Six hears spirit swords being summoned, and the soft flicker of green and red lights follows. Now on steady footing, Siete leans in through the open window and grins at him.

"Six."

The wind musses his hair and makes it more unruly, continuous crawling through windows and against the ground wrinkles his custom Santa suit, and his cheeks take a red tint once again from the cold. And yet, his smile shines through the darkness, a beacon of Christmas cheer. Six tears his eyes away, afraid at what he'll find when he analyzes the way Siete's looking at him: like he's the only person in the world, instead of the only one in the room.

"Merry Christmas."

Six sighs, biting the inside of his cheek. He brings himself to respond in kind, but the sigh must be enough of a response to satisfy Siete. Before he can get the words out, Siete shuts the window, and Six stares at the space he once occupied.

It's impossible for this sequence to be anything but a dream, because this Siete couldn't exist in reality. His voice was too kind, his smile too muted; this is who Siete would be if Six stripped away the bravado.

He can't even ruminate in peace. In the silent night, he hears Siete humming to himself as he summons swords to support his walk back to his room—and then, through their shared wall, he hears Siete tumble back in, the same way he did through Six's window. When Siete hits the floor, the sleigh bells he left behind jingle underneath Six's bed.

"Merry Christmas," he says to someone who can't hear him. It won't take long for Siete to return, regardless of whether Six asks for it. He wonders whether it's Christmas cheer that's in his heart now, even if it wasn't Santa that visited him.

**Author's Note:**

> Isn't it fucked up how Six just waits for all these people he loves only for them to leave him behind or never actually come  
> Title from Josh Groban’s _Believe_ … BELIEVE IN WHAT U FEEL INSIDE… AND GIVE UR DREAMS THE WINGS 2 FLY…. YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED… IF YOU JUST BELIEVE…


End file.
